[group-organizers] python office hours at ps1

[Ned Batchelder]

On 4/21/15 10:46 PM, sheila miguez wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 9:02 PM, Kevin Horn <kevin.horn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sheila M: Don't you also help maintain pyvideo.org?  Thanks for that.
>> Also, office hours at a hackerspace is an idea I hadn't considered.  Could
>> I convince you to elaborate on that (perhaps in a separate thread)?
>>
>
> Our space (ps1) has various events including member-run office hours. We've
> got math office hours, electronics office hours, and python office hours.
>
> The ps1 event is smaller than the larger project night that happens in the
> loop. Basically, I and others greet new people as they walk in and chat a
> little to see what they are interested in. People hang out for a few hours
> chatting and working on things.
>
> I enjoy when people show up who have never been to a hackerspace before
> because then I get to show them around and explain the place.
>
> Some issues I have --
>
> I'd like to get better at guiding people who show up without any plans.
> Sometimes people show up because they are generally curious about things,
> but have no specific goals.
>
> I'd like to be able to matchmake people to open source projects with local
> maintainers. It would be cool to take people from an Open Source Comes to
> Campus event in to some project with local maintainers.
In Boston, we've tried having a regular email that goes out announcing 
projects maintained by members.  It hasn't really taken off, but we're 
going to keep trying it.  For example: 
http://www.meetup.com/bostonpython/messages/76549008/
>
> I'd like to be better at guiding people to a map of projects and tutorials
> for topics of interest. Right now I have a wiki page that is not tightly
> organized <https://wiki.pumpingstationone.org/Python_Office_Hours>.
>
Helping people find things to do is an interesting problem.  People have 
ways to learn the language (various online sites, books, etc). Then they 
get to the end of that on-ramp, and they have no destination to guide 
their next phase of learning.  I started pulling together project ideas 
here: http://nedbatchelder.com/text/kindling.html

Some are just elaborate exercises (project euler, for example), some are 
full-fledged project ideas.  I'm hoping that people can find something 
there to spark their interest.

If you have suggestions for the page, I'm interested in expanding it.

--Ned.